"The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret." — T. Pratchett

Mixed bag o’ links, 08/03/13

It occurred to me that I haven’t done a linkspam in a while, and a couple of planned posts just haven’t happened. (Switching back and forth between WordPress’s visual and HTML editors screwed up the formatting once again by inserting tags I didn’t want, but I think I mostly got it displaying OK. The paragraph spacing is still wrong, but spoons.)

No wonder that one reminded me of Paghat’s Chihuahuas Conquer the Earth, since that is apparently the first place I saw it. 🙂 Though I was thinking of the first photo on the page when I hunted the page down again.

But, on to the links, mostly originally shared to G+, and in no particular order. As I recall, several were snagged from Shakesville, and some others from Slacktivist. I’m no doubt forgetting sources of some others.

“Michigan’s Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indian nation has voted to approve same-sex marriage – becoming the third US tribe to seek introduce marriage equality under its tribal laws”

Which, unfortunately, reminded me of an older one:

Daniel Heath Justice on Queer Indians and the Cherokee Nation – In which there was nothing prohibiting same-sex marriage, until a lesbian couple tried it and some loud Baptists pushed through new laws and went on about queer people as Not Real Cherokees™. Because being a controlling evangelical blowhard is so much a part of traditional culture. Shameful, in so many ways.

But what is most offensive is the routine denial of those experiences, as though we are either imagining the stares, disapproving/disgusted looks, the nudging and pointing and laughter, or they are somehow our fault. Having our experiences dismissed is actually part of the systematic oppression of fat people. Portraying us as overly sensitive, or imagining the way we are treated is also a form of abuse. It labels us as “deluded” or emotionally damaged. It is ironic, many of us do have emotional damage, not because we are fat, but because of the way society treats us as fat people, which includes the regular dismissal of our experiences.

One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed photo series like this, even as I want to slap some people silly. Similar applies to any excuse for socially accepted public bullying behavior. 😐 A lot like my satisfaction with documenting street harassment through Hollaback and similar, come to think of it. Kinda puts some dents in the gaslighting’s plausibility.

Cuccinelli gets promotional help — from Democrats » – And speaking of annoying controlling blowhards. “Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial hopeful, Ken Cuccinelli, has a new book out, and no one seems happier about that than Democrats.” I am not about to buy a copy, even out of morbid curiosity. And I am already hoping that I won’t have to go into an uncontrollable “Oh, Virginia!!!” headdesking fit if/when he gets elected.

I’m not a publicist or an expert in p.r. but I think it’s probably a bad sign when your rivals think it’s hilarious to read your book out loud in public.

When you start to make this about other things it becomes an “against violence act” and not a targeted focus act… I didn’t like the way it was expanded to include other different groups. What you need is something that is focused specifically to help the shelters and to help out law enforcement, who is trying to work with the crimes that have been committed against women and helping them to stand up.

“The Conservatives failed here because traditional Tory voters look at Cameron and ask themselves: is he a Conservative? And they conclude, no, he is not. He is talking about gay marriage, wind turbines, unlimited immigration from India, he wants Turkey to join the EU.”

Proving that once again the Republican Party is beyond parody, a bill being considered by the Iowa state House would “prohibit [married] parents of minor children from getting a ‘no-fault’ divorce” and would require married parents of minor children “to show a spouse was guilty of adultery, had been sent to prison on a felony conviction, had physically or sexually abused someone in the family, or had abandoned the family for at least a year.”

There’s a certain type of social conservative who enthuses about marriage, but worries that it isn’t what it used to be, weakened by decades of social change and legal reform. To me, this is counter to everything I feel and observe about marriage. As an institution, I believe that marriage is getting stronger and stronger.

The common lingering idea that divorce is always terrible and traumatic, especially for kids, is one thing I’ve been meaning to write more about. Including the Christian hegemony factor there. Hint: By the time my parents finally divorced right after I started first grade, I was relieved.

(CONTENT NOTE: This gets ugly and painful. We’re dealing here with some really awful, evil topics, including sexual abuse, abuse of power, rape, and the ways that powerful, self-righteous people defend all of the above.)

And to end things up, from the “couldn’t make this up if I tried” department:

Madness. “The chaos in Beaver County began on Thursday when a receptionist at a Sewickley eye doctor’s office called Travis Clawson, a 19-year-old Ambridge Area High School student, to confirm an appointment, according to the Beaver County Times. The receptionist’s call went to voicemail, on which Clawson sings Will Smith’s “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” theme song for his greeting. Instead of hearing the lyric “Shooting some b-ball outside of the school,” the receptionist interpreted it as “Shooting people outside of the school.” It is not clear if anyone bothered to call the number and hear the theme song and either recognize it as the song from The Prince of Bel-Air or actually listen to the line. Instead, schools across the county were forced into lockdown for about 30 minutes as police searched for Clawson.”

I’m kind of hoping that the comment about the police spending three hours trying to find Will Smith as a co-conspirator was sarcastic, but in this case it’s disconcertingly hard to tell. Also:

Now many of this see this story as a case of sheer lunacy, but Ambridge Area School District Superintendent Erv Weischedel felt it was a positive experience in showing that “”[w]hile this situation can be considered to be a false alarm, it was an excellent opportunity to test our emergency procedures. The procedures in place were efficient and quickly implemented and proved to be successful.” First, I would go a little further than saying that “this situation can be considered to be a false alarm.” It was a false alarm. It was the song of The Prince of Bel-Air. Second, if I were a parent, I would be more concerned that my children were under the supervision of people with little judgment or deductive reasoning.